we’re sitting in the café, trying not to let our legs touch under the table. Stephan is tall and white-blond, but his head is too large and too oblong. Every time I look at him I think of those stone statues on Easter Island. He’s wearing light-blue jeans, a pink Tyrolean shirt and a non-ironic Janker, the jacket people wear with Lederhosen.
‘What do you do? In the day I mean?’ I ask.
To show how cool I am, I’m not planning on making any reference to the fact that he’s a prince.
‘Mostly I deal with the administrative side of our place in Steiermark,’ Stephan says. ‘But I try to get to Vienna as often as I can.’
‘Is the … the place open to the public?’
‘Yup, that’s our primary source of income these days,’ Stephan says. ‘We organise conferences, weddings and parties there. There’s a lot to be done. And what do you do?’
Up to now, the tone of our date has been similar to the one I generally have with my students during their first lesson. A dialogue consisting of a question, an answer, question, answer, question, answer. Although Stephan has shown a polite interest throughout, it’s as though we have a pane of glass between us.
‘I teach English at Berlitz,’ I reply. ‘At the moment I’m doing a lot of “out of house”.’
‘What’s that?’ Stephan asks.
‘It means I don’t teach at the school. Instead I go out to various companies and teach at their offices. All over Vienna.’
‘Sounds exciting,’ says Stephan.
‘Well, not really,’ I say. ‘And sometimes I feel a bit like a call-girl. Though I’m selling English instead of sex.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with prostitutes,’ says Stephan. ‘I go to brothels a lot.’
Because I’m alternative and spontaneous – The Natural History Museum! Crrrrrrazy or what?! – I pretend this doesn’t shock me.
‘Oh right,’ I say. ‘Are there lots of brothels in Vienna?’
Stephan nods. ‘I’d imagine there are at least twenty,’ he says. ‘But I never go to the ones the Tschuschen or the Turks go to. Just the classy ones.’
Tschusch is racist Austrian slang for people from the Balkans. Once, an AMS student asked me if I knew what a Tschuschen handbag was. When I shook my head – already slightly panic-stricken about what his reply would be – he said it was a supermarket carrier-bag. The same student complained angrily in another lesson about there being ‘too many turkeys in Austria’.
‘Oh,’ I say, staring at Stephan. For some perverse reason I find it kind of arousing that he goes to brothels. I wonder briefly if I should sleep with him just for the experience of having sex with someone who goes to brothels, but the sight of Prince Stephan makes me feel as aroused as a bit of sandpaper. I already know we won’t be meeting again.
‘I’m a regular at one place,’ he goes on. ‘Sometimes I even get a discount there.’
Stephan sips his coffee as nonchalantly as if we were still talking about the weather.
‘And what kind of discount do you get at a brothel?’ I ask. ‘Do you get two for the price of one?’
Stephan nods. ‘It’s a bit like that. They have one girl who can suck you off for forty-five minutes. I see her a lot.’
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘Forty-five minutes? That’s, wow, that’s a really long time. I didn’t even realise you could suck someone off for that long. Amazing she doesn’t get cramp.’
My lessons are forty-five minutes long, I think, and sometimes I can hardly handle that.
Stephan takes another sip of his coffee.
‘So you go to brothels even if you’re in a relationship?’ I ask.
‘It has happened,’ Stephan says. ‘But now my mother wants me to think about settling down.’
‘So you’re looking for a princess for your kingdom? Do the girls have to undergo some kind of challenge first? Like catching a dragon’s tail? Or is it the princess who can give the longest blow job that wins?’
Stephan looks at me without saying anything. Since this date has now unmistakably died, I don’t have to be charming any more. Instead I roll a few grains of sugar between my fingers and wish I was at home with Optimus and my books. I don’t want to be with men like Stephan Deyn-Hofmannstein. Actually, I don’t want to be dating. I don’t want to pretend. I’m OK with being alone. I like my life. I like my quiet flat, clean kitchen and my shelves full of books. I like the fact that everything’s just where I left it. I don’t need anything more, and my solitude makes me neither unhappy nor pathetic.
Despite this, when we’ve finished our coffees we go on to a temporary exhibition about Chernobyl on the ground floor and look at pictures of kids with missing limbs, dressed in knitted woollens.
Outside the museum we stand on the stone steps and compete to be first to come up with an excuse to end the date. It’s Stephan who wins.
‘Unfortunately I’ve promised to meet a friend,’ he says, making a vague gesture towards the centre of town.
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘No problem.’
We continue to stand facing one another.
‘What are your plans for this afternoon?’ he asks, already looking away longingly.
‘Oh, same old, same old I guess,’ I say. ‘Relaxing at home and masturbating while I listen to a bit of Michael Bublé.’
Stephan looks at me. His eyes have become tinged with fear.
‘Just joking,’ I say quickly. ‘I hate Michael Bublé.’
He still doesn’t say anything.
‘Though I do have a friend who’s in a backing choir,’ I continue. ‘And she’s worked with him and says he’s actually very nice. Not at all diva-ish or arrogant. Though you might think he was, judging from his appearance. He looks so smug.’
My Michael Bublé knowledge falls on deaf ears. Stephan and I kiss each other on the cheek and go our separate ways without any promises to stay in touch.
Because I can’t go to the first district in case I bump into Stephan again, I head to Haydn, the English language cinema in the sixth district. It’s only three o’clock and the place is nearly empty. When the trailers start, I try to be happy and relieved at being on my own again, and give myself a pat on the back for escaping the fate of becoming the princess who is forced to give Easter-Island-Head forty-five-minute blow jobs. But I don’t really feel it. Just emptiness mixed with gnawing dissatisfaction. And it’s not until I get home that I realise a bit of popcorn has somehow lodged itself in my hair.
